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Concerning Cats, My Own and Some Others
CHAPTER
I. CONCERNING THE PRETTY LADY. II. CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS. III.
CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS. IV. CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S
CATS. V. CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS. VI. CONCERNING CATS IN
ENGLAND. VII. CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS. VIII. CONCERNING
HIGH-BRED CATS IN AMERICA. IX. CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY. X.
CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS. XI. CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES.
XII. CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS. XIII. CONCERNING VARIETIES OF
CATS. XIV. CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE.
_Concerning Cats_
CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE "PRETTY LADY"
She was such a Pretty Lady, and gentle withal; so quiet and eminently
ladylike in her behavior, and yet dignified and haughtily reserved as
a duchess. Still it is better, under certain circumstances, to be a
cat than to be a duchess. And no duchess of the realm ever had more
faithful retainers or half so abject subjects.
Do not tell me that cats never love people; that only places have real
hold upon their affections. The Pretty Lady was contented wherever I,
her most humble slave, went with her. She migrated with me from
boarding-house to sea-shore cottage; then to regular housekeeping; up
to the mountains for a summer, and back home, a long day's journey on
the railway; and her attitude was always "Wheresoever thou goest I
will go, and thy people shall be my people."
I have known, and loved, and studied many cats, but my knowledge of
her alone would convince me that cats love people--in their dignified,
reserved way, and when they feel that their love is not wasted; that
they reason, and that they seldom act from impulse.
I do not remember that I was born with an inordinate fondness for
cats; or that I cried for them as an infant. I do not know, even, that
my childhood was marked by an overweening pride in them; this,
perhaps, was because my cruel parents established a decree, rigid and
unbending as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that we must never
have more than one cat at a time. Although this very law may argue
that predilection, at an early age, for harboring everything feline
which came in my way, which has since become at once a source of
comfort and distraction.
After a succession of feline dynasties, the kings and queens of which
were handsome, ugly, sleek, forlorn, black, white, deaf, spotted, and
otherwise marked, I remember fastening my affections securely upon one
kitten who grew up to be the ugliest, gauntest, and dingiest specimen
I ever have seen. In the days of his kittenhood I christened him
"Tassie" after his mother; but as time sped on, and the name hardly
comported with masculine dignity, this was changed to Tacitus, as more
befitting his sex. He had a habit of dodging in and out of the front
door, which was heavy, and which sometimes swung together before he
was well out of it. As a consequence, a caudal appendage with two
broken joints was one of his distinguishing features. Besides a broken
tail, he had ears which bore the marks of many a hard-fought battle,
and an expression which for general "lone and lorn"-ness would have
discouraged even Mrs. Gummidge. But I loved him, and judging from the
disconsolate and long-continued wailing with which he rilled the house
whenever I was away, my affection was not unrequited.
But my real thraldom did not begin until I took the Pretty Lady's
mother. We had not been a week in our first house before a handsomely
striped tabby, with eyes like beautiful emeralds, who had been the pet
and pride of the next-door neighbor for five years, came over and
domiciled herself. In due course of time she proudly presented us with
five kittens. Educated in the belief that one cat was all that was
compatible with respectability, I had four immediately disposed of,
keeping the prettiest one, which grew up into the beautiful,
fascinating, and seductive maltese "Pretty Lady," with white trimmings
to her coat. The mother of Pretty Lady used to catch two mice at a
time, and bringing them in together, lay one at my feet and say as
plainly as cat language can say, "There, you eat that one, and I'll
eat this," and then seem much surprised and disgusted that I had not
devoured mine when she had finished her meal.
We were occupying a furnished house for the summer, however, and as we
were to board through the winter, I took only the kitten back to town,
thinking the mother would return to her former home, just over the
fence. But no. For two weeks she refused all food and would not once
enter the other house. Then I went out for her, and hearing my voice
she came in and sat down before me, literally scolding me for a
quarter of an hour. I shall be laughed at, but actual tears stood in
her lovely green eyes and ran down her aristocratic nose, attesting
her grief and accusing me, louder than her wailing, of perfidy.
I could not keep her. She would not return to her old home. I finally
compromised by carrying her in a covered basket a mile and a half and
bestowing her upon a friend who loves cats nearly as well as I. But
although she was petted, and praised, and fed on the choicest of
delicacies, she would not be resigned. After six weeks of mourning,
she disappeared, and never was heard of more. Whether she sought a new
and more constant mistress, or whether, in her grief at my shameless
abandonment of her, she went to some lonely pier and threw herself off
the dock, will never be known. But her reproachful gaze and tearful
emerald eyes haunted me all winter. Many a restless night did I have
to reproach myself for abandoning a creature who so truly loved me;
and in many a dream did she return to heap shame and ignominy upon my
repentant head.
This experience determined me to cherish her daughter, whom, rather, I
cherished as her son, until there were three little new-born kittens,
which in a moment of ignorance I "disposed of" at once. Naturally, the
young mother fell exceedingly ill. In the most pathetic way she
dragged herself after me, moaning and beseeching for help. Finally, I
succumbed, went to a neighbor's where several superfluous kittens had
arrived the night before, and begged one. It was a little black
fellow, cold and half dead; but the Pretty Lady was beside herself
with joy when I bestowed it upon her. For two days she would not leave
the box where I established their headquarters, and for months she
refused to wean it, or to look upon it as less than absolutely
perfect. I may say that the Pretty Lady lived to be nine years old,
and had, during that brief period, no less than ninety-three kittens,
besides two adopted ones; but never did she bestow upon any of her own
offspring that wealth of pride and affection which was showered upon
black Bobbie.
When the first child of her adoption was two weeks old, I was ill one
morning, and did not appear at breakfast. It had always been her
custom to wait for my coming down in the morning, evidently
considering it a not unimportant part of her duty to see me well
launched for the day. Usually she sat at the head of the stairs and
waited patiently until she heard me moving about. Sometimes she came
in and sat on a chair at the head of my bed, or gently touched my face
with her nose or paw. Although she knew she was at liberty to sleep in
my room, she seldom did so, except when she had an infant on her
hands. At first she invariably kept him in a lower drawer of my
bureau. When he was large enough, she removed him to the foot of the
bed, where for a week or two her maternal solicitude and sociable
habits of nocturnal conversation with her progeny interfered seriously
with my night's rest. If my friends used to notice a wild and haggard
appearance of unrest about me at certain periods of the year, the
reason stands here confessed.
I was ill when black Bobbie was two weeks old. The Pretty Lady waited
until breakfast was over, and as I did not appear, came up and jumped
on the bed, where she manifested some curiosity as to my lack of
active interest in the world's affairs.
"Now, pussy," I said, putting out my hand and stroking her back, "I'm
sick this morning. When you were sick, I went and got you a kitten.
Can't you get me one?"
This was all. My sister came in then and spoke to me, and the Pretty
Lady left us at once; but in less than two minutes she came back with
her cherished kitten in her mouth. Depositing him in my neck, she
stood and looked at me, as much as to say:--
"There, you can take him awhile. He cured me and I won't be selfish; I
will share him with you."
I was ill for three days, and all that time the kitten was kept with
me. When his mother wanted him, she kept him on the foot of the bed,
where she nursed, and lapped, and scrubbed him until it seemed as if
she must wear even his stolid nerves completely out. But whenever she
felt like going out she brought him up and tucked him away in the
hollow of my neck, with a little guttural noise that, interpreted,
meant:--
"There, now you take care of him awhile. I'm all tired out. Don't wake
him up."
But when the infant had dropped soundly asleep, she invariably came
back and demanded him; and not only demanded, but dragged him forth
from his lair by the nape of the neck, shrieking and protesting, to
the foot of the bed again, where he was obliged to go through another
course of scrubbing and vigorous maternal attentions that actually
kept his fur from growing as fast as the coats of less devotedly
cared-for kittens grow.
When I was well enough to leave my room, she transferred him to my
lower bureau drawer, and then to a vantage-point behind an old lounge.
But she never doubted, apparently, that it was the loan of that kitten
that rescued me from an untimely grave.
I have lost many an hour of much-needed sleep from my cat's habit of
coming upstairs at four A.M. and jumping suddenly upon the bed;
perhaps landing on the pit of my stomach. Waking in that fashion,
unsympathetic persons would have pardoned me if I had indulged in
injudicious language, or had even thrown the cat violently from my
otherwise peaceful couch. But conscience has not to upbraid me with
any of these things. I flatter myself that I bear even this patiently;
I remember to have often made sleepy but pleasant remarks to the
faithful little friend whose affection for me and whose desire to
behold my countenance was too great to permit her to wait till
breakfast time.
If I lay awake for hours afterward, perhaps getting nothing more than
literal "cat-naps," I consoled myself with remembering how Richelieu,
and Wellington, and Mohammed, and otherwise great as well as
discriminating persons, loved cats; I remembered, with some stirrings
of secret pride, that it is only the artistic nature, the truly
aesthetic soul that appreciates poetry, and grace, and all refined
beauty, who truly loves cats; and thus meditating with closed eyes, I
courted slumber again, throughout the breaking dawn, while the cat
purred in delight close at hand.
The Pretty Lady was evidently of Angora or coon descent, as her fur
was always longer and silkier than that of ordinary cats. She was fond
of all the family. When we boarded in Boston, we kept her in a front
room, two flights from the ground. Whenever any of us came in the
front door, she knew it. No human being could have told, sitting in a
closed room in winter, two flights up, the identity of a person coming
up the steps and opening the door. But the Pretty Lady, then only six
months old, used to rouse from her nap in a big chair, or from the top
of a folding bed, jump down, and be at the hall door ready to greet
the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got
down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and
every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent
scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of smell." I
call it sagacity.
One summer we all went up to the farm in northern Vermont, and decided
to take her and her son, "Mr. McGinty," with us. We put them both in a
large market-basket and tied the cover securely. On the train Mr.
McGinty manifested a desire to get out, and was allowed to do so, a
stout cord having been secured to his collar first, and the other end
tied to the car seat. He had a delightful journey, once used to the
noise and motion of the train. He sat on our laps, curled up on the
seat and took naps, or looked out of the windows with evident
puzzlement at the way things had suddenly taken to flying; he even
made friends with the passengers, and in general amused himself as any
other traveller would on an all-day's journey by rail, except that he
did not risk his eyesight by reading newspapers. But the Pretty Lady
had not travelled for some years, and did not enjoy the trip as well
as formerly; on the contrary she curled herself into a round tight
ball in one corner of the basket till the journey's end was reached.
Once at the farm she seemed contented as long as I remained with her.
There was plenty of milk and cream, and she caught a great many mice.
She was far too dainty to eat them, but she had an inherent pleasure
in catching mice, just like her more plebeian sisters; and she enjoyed
presenting them to Mr. McGinty or me, or some other worthy object of
her solicitude.
She was at first afraid of "the big outdoors." The wide, wind-blown
spaces, the broad, sunshiny sky, the silence and the roominess of it
all, were quite different from her suburban experiences; and the farm
animals, too, were in her opinion curiously dangerous objects. Big
Dan, the horse, was truly a horrible creature; the rooster was a new
and suspicious species of biped, and the bleating calves objects of
her direst hatred.
The pig in his pen possessed for her the most horrid fascination.
Again and again would she steal out and place herself where she could
see that dreadful, strange, pink, fat creature inside his own
quarters. She would fix her round eyes widely upon him in blended fear
and admiration. If the pig uttered the characteristic grunt of his
race, the Pretty Lady at first ran swiftly away; but afterward she
used to turn and gaze anxiously at us, as if to say:--
"Do you hear that? Isn't this a truly horrible creature?" and in other
ways evince the same sort of surprise that a professor in the Peabody
Museum might, were the skeleton of the megatherium suddenly to accost
him after the manner peculiar to its kind.
It was funnier, even, to see Mr. McGinty on the morning after his
arrival at the farm, as he sallied forth and made acquaintance with
other of God's creatures than humans and cats, and the natural enemy
of his kind, the dog. In his suburban home he had caught rats and
captured on the sly many an English sparrow. When he first
investigated his new quarters on the farm, he discovered a beautiful
flock of very large birds led by one of truly gorgeous plumage.
"Ah!" thought Mr. McGinty, "this is a great and glorious country,
where I can have such birds as these for the catching. Tame, too. I'll
have one for breakfast."
So he crouched down, tiger-like, and crept carefully along to a
convenient distance and was preparing to spring, when the large and
gorgeous bird looked up from his worm and remarked:--
"Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut!" and, taking his wives, withdrew toward the
barn.
Mr. McGinty drew back amazed. "This is a queer bird," he seemed to
say; "saucy, too. However, I'll soon have him," and he crept more
carefully than before up to springing distance, when again this most
gorgeous bird drew up and exclaimed, with a note of annoyance:--
"Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut! What ails that old cat, anyway?" And again
he led his various wives barn-ward.
Mr. McGinty drew up with a surprised air, and apparently made a
cursory study of the leading anatomical features of this strange bird;
but he did not like to give up, and soon crouched and prepared for
another onslaught. This time Mr. Chanticleer allowed the cat to come
up close to his flock, when he turned and remarked in the most
amicable manner, "Cut-cut-cut-cut!" which interpreted seemed to mean:
"Come now; that's all right. You're evidently new here; but you'd
better take my advice and not fool with me."
Anyhow, with this, down went McGinty's hope of a bird breakfast "to
the bottom of the sea," and he gave up the hunt. He soon made friends,
however, with every animal on the place, and so endeared himself to
the owners that he lived out his days there with a hundred acres and
more as his own happy hunting-ground.
Not so, the Pretty Lady. I went away on a short visit after a few
weeks, leaving her behind. From the moment of my disappearance she was
uneasy and unhappy. On the fifth day she disappeared. When I returned
and found her not, I am not ashamed to say that I hunted and called
her everywhere, nor even that I shed a few tears when days rolled into
weeks and she did not appear, as I realized that she might be
starving, or have suffered tortures from some larger animal.
There are many remarkable stories of cats who find their way home
across almost impossible roads and enormous distances. There is a
saying, believed by many people, "You can't lose a cat," which can be
proved by hundreds of remarkable returns. But the Pretty Lady had
absolutely no sense of locality. She had always lived indoors and had
never been allowed to roam the neighborhood. It was five weeks before
we found trace of her, and then only by accident. My sister was
passing a field of grain, and caught a glimpse of a small creature
which she at first thought to be a woodchuck. She turned and looked at
it, and called "Pussy, pussy," when with a heart-breaking little cry
of utter delight and surprise, our beloved cat came toward her. From
the first, the wide expanse of the country had confused her; she had
evidently "lost her bearings" and was probably all the time within
fifteen minutes' walk of the farm-house.
When found, she was only a shadow of herself, and for the first and
only time in her life we could count her ribs. She was wild with
delight, and clung to my sister's arms as though fearing to lose her;
and in all the fuss that was made over her return, no human being
could have showed more affection, or more satisfaction at finding her
old friends again.
That she really was lost, and had no sense of locality to guide her
home, was proven by her conduct after she returned to her Boston home.
I had preceded my sister, and was at the theatre on the evening when
she arrived with the Pretty Lady. The latter was carried into the
kitchen, taken from her basket, and fed. Then, instead of going around
the house and settling herself in her old home, she went into the
front hall which she had left four months before, and seated herself
on the spot where she always watched and waited when I was out. When I
came home at eleven, I saw through the screen door her "that was lost
and is found." She had been waiting to welcome me for three mortal
hours.
I wish those people who believe cats have no affection for people
could have seen her then. She would not leave me for an instant, and
manifested her love in every possible way; and when I retired for the
night, she curled up on my pillow and purred herself contentedly to
sleep, only rising when I did. After breakfast that first morning
after her return, she asked to be let out of the back door, and made
me understand that I must go with her. I did so, and she explored
every part of the back yard, entreating me in the same way she called
her kittens to keep close by her. She investigated our own premises
thoroughly and then crept carefully under the fences on either side
into the neighbor's precincts where she had formerly visited in
friendly fashion; then she came timidly back, all the time keeping
watch that she did not lose me. Having finished her tour of
inspection, she went in and led me on an investigating trip all
through the house, smelling of every corner and base-board, and
insisting that every closet door should be opened, so that she might
smell each closet through in the same way. When this was done, she
settled herself in one of her old nooks for a nap and allowed me to
leave.
But never again did she go out of sight of the house. For more than a
year she would not go even into a neighbor's yard, and when she
finally decided that it might be safe to crawl under the fences on to
other territory, she invariably turned about to sit facing the house,
as though living up to a firm determination never to lose sight of it
again. This practice she kept up until at the close of her last mortal
sickness, when she crawled into a dark place under a neighboring barn
and said good-by to earthly fears and worries forever.
_Requiescat in pace_, my Pretty Lady. I wish all your sex had your
gentle dignity, and grace, and beauty, to say nothing of your
faithfulness and affection. Like Mother Michel's "Monmouth," it may be
said of you:--
"She was merely a cat, But her Sublime Virtues place her on a level
with The Most Celebrated Mortals, and In Ancient Egypt Altars would
have been Erected to her Memory."